In the IT Industry there is a topic that comes up on a regular basis and generates a lot of debate and that is Bring Your Own Device or BYOD as it is more commonly known. It seems that since the new wave of "smart phones" have come along the IT industry seems to have woken up to a threat that has existed since the early PDA's like the Psion or my beloved US Robotics Palm Pilot (which was released in 1996, its fifth generation sister has only just been retired from our household)

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For as long as I can remember IT staff have been dumping data from corporate systems to their devices in one form or another. This data was unencrypted and unsecured and taken off the network and out of the building without considering data or security policies

Early on in my first career (i.e. childhood), I learnt about features. I would pore over the Argos catalogue with a biro - “got! got! want! want! got! - choosing the toys I was going to ask for at Christmas. I had a budget (roughly based on how good I’d been that year) and a deadline (Christmas shopping), and I then had to put forward a business case (Christmas list). I’d embellish this business case with facts about the toys I most wanted. This was made easier by Argos because they’d listed the features from the side of the toy’s box: “With realistic laser canon sounds”, “operating tipper wagons”, “TV AM’s resident rodent superstar” and so on. So, I was glad to discover that choosing and justifying a Juniper SRX is nearly as easy.

Usually if a network device has its features written on the side of the box, you’d only ever want it on your broadband at home. But what if someone made an affordable device which could service your home or small office, runs Junos, has a stateful firewall, switchports and most of the protocols you’ve grown up with, wouldn’t you put that on your Christmas list? “SRX100 - want!”